


Poem of Ecstasy

by calico_fiction



Series: ètude de la sexualitè in C Major [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Implied Genderqueer Character, Misunderstandings, Music, Queer Character, Queer History, Queer Themes, Semi-Ahistorical probably, Sexuality, gender nonconformity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21680797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calico_fiction/pseuds/calico_fiction
Summary: Sex never seems that interesting until Crowley hears the orchestral version.
Series: ètude de la sexualitè in C Major [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573063
Kudos: 19





	Poem of Ecstasy

**Author's Note:**

> Rated just to be safe. It's sexy, but everything is implicit and/or metaphorical.
> 
> Takes place in 1905.

There are a lot of different things that Crowley loves about having a human-adjacent corporation. He loves swaddling his bare, vulnerable skin in soft, warm things. He loves sleeping and having dreams and waking up feeling different than he did when he dropped off. He loves having hair and the nice tickly feeling of it when it brushes across the back of his neck. He loves the sharp, bitter taste of hard liquor. He loves the swell of a full orchestra making his delicate little eardrums shake.

There are a lot of different things that Crowley _doesn't_ love about having a human-adjacent corporation. The social norms that come along with it if you want to muck about with the rest of humanity, for one. Nothing but a hassle, those. He doesn't love the feeling of the mush one has to chew food into in order to swallow it when one is person-shaped. He doesn't love paper cuts. He doesn't love the suffocating smell of everyone's heavy perfume.

There are also a lot of different things about having a human-adjacent corporation that Crowley simply doesn't _get_. He doesn't get money. He doesn't get bath houses. He doesn't get gossip (though he knows the angel Aziraphale is quite into it). He doesn't get sex.

Well. Crowley understands sex. As in humans have got these particular bits, and what kind of bits they've got determines what other kind of bits they end up with later. And in the other way, of course, Crowley knows that they can put their special bits inside someone else's bits, or they can rub them together, or put them in their mouths, and that it all makes an earthly host of chemicals sing a rousing chorus in their brains. He knows they spend weeks and months painting very lovely pictures of other people's bits. (He does appreciate the paintings. Paintings are one of those things Crowley loves. Very pleasing to the human-adjacent eyeball.)

The question, Crowley supposes, about money and bath houses and gossip and sex, is: how is it worth it? Money is supposed to make trade easier, but it ends up being more complicated in the long run. A bath is meant to be relaxing and get you clean, which can be done just as well if not better on your lonesome. Gossip is a lot of listening to someone just on the off chance they share a little tidbit that interests you. And sex is messy and exhausting and an orgasm hardly even lasts that long, the chemical party only the barest stretch longer. So what, really, is the point?

So anyway, Crowley goes to see the performance of Poem of Ecstasy because he loves music and because he loves a good controversy. Any time someone skips out on the status quo Crowley wants to watch, and the louder the better. So racy music? That's the stuff. Crowley is eager to see the performance, and to catch a good view of some stuffy nobles getting their puritanical feathers bent. But the fact that the arrangement is meant to be a representation of sex doesn't really twig on Crowley's radar of interest.

He has the best seat in the house, of course. He always does, unless he's attending something with the angel because Aziraphale likes to keep a lower profile (although, if you ask Crowley, he's not really very good at it). The guy who comes on stage after the orchestra has all set up, Alex something, is very little, very handsome, and very mustachioed. He marches across to the conductor's stand without so much as a glance at the audience, holding his chin higher than what must be comfortable. The chip on his shoulder is very nearly as big as he is. Crowley raises an eyebrow - and his expectations, out of spite.

The piece starts with a gentle sway, alluring, and then goes very quickly into a warbling crescendo, and just as quickly soft and lulling again. Crowley observes all the musicians, but keeps the closest eye on Alex. The piece is new; he alone can express its truth until someone else gets to know it better. He goes back and forth between loose and eager in time with the arrangement. Crowley finds himself sucked in to the mood, the way he always does when the music is good. He feels deeply relaxed, almost sleepy, when the winds hum, and when the brass picks it up Crowley's heart races, he bites his lip, and he leans forward on the edge of his seat.

It's always like this, when the music is good, but something about this piece is different. The way the rise and the fall is continuous, the way each crescendo is bigger than the last, the way the flutes tease just before the next swell - the way his own piece is making Alex stand up on his toes and toss his head back. Crowley has been eager for a big finish before, certainly, but never before has he been so frustrated when it didn't come. By the time the bells have started teasing along with the flutes Crowley is holding his breath, gripping his chair so hard he just might leave with some of it under his nails. Finally the finish comes, and it goes on and on and grows and grows and it makes Crowley squirm and he can hardly breathe- and then _silence_ and Crowley all but collapses back into his chair.

"Goodness," says the woman sitting next to him, mild but slightly breathless, trying in vain to fan away the flush across her plump cheeks. "Helen was right, that was just so like the real thing, wasn't it."

"Oh," says Crowley, surprised to find that his voice sounds exactly like hers. Pity he doesn't have a fan of his own. "Was it, then?"

"Well," she cuts him a faux-coy look from behind her fan. "If you know how to do it right." Crowley smiles gleefully, even as he's still catching his breath. Much as he does love to see someone stuffy get their feathers bent, it's always so much better to meet a fellow ne'er-do-well. This woman certainly seems to care not one whit for the prim and proper behavior expected of her. She smiles back at him and adds, "Mary. I need a cigarette after all that. Would you mind terribly walking me out?"

"No, of course, not at all," Crowley says, not bothering any more than she did to sound innocent. It might be his purpose in life to get 'good' people to do bad, but it's just so much fun to join the rowdy in whatever trouble they're getting into. And he's already taken the night off anyway, he might as well. If only just to see what kind of tomfoolery Mary has in mind.

Crowley follows Mary out a side door of the theatre and partakes in one of her cigarettes. He doesn't much care for the taste, but loves the warmth in his throat and chest. They smoke and listen to the muffled cacophony of the main doors teaming with departing patrons, and do a whole lot of nothing much else.

"Aren't you going to ask to walk me home?" Mary asks suddenly. The abrupt phrasing would get her termed rude by most else, but to Crowley she only sounds like she has a burning curiosity - something he himself knows very well, and knows how it can sometimes get mixed up once you let it out - so he doesn't get defensive. He shrugs his bony shoulders under his tightly fitted jacket and vest ( _very_ expensive), jangling his glass garland necklace ( _very_ cheap) against the buttons. Mary glances at the necklace and then wonders in addition, "Are you a... Scientific Humanitarian?" Crowley laughs. He doesn't know what that means, but it sounds like it's probably something funny for him to be.

"I know one of those euphemisms," he answers easily. He's a little bored, having thought they were going to cause some ruckus and now they're not, but Mary's company isn't unpleasant and she hands him another cigarette so he's content enough for now.

"I suppose I've read you all sorts of wrong, then," she mutters. She seems a little put out as she lights them both up. "Only I thought you were randy."

"Did you?" Crowley asks in surprise, nearly choking on the drag he'd been taking. He thinks back to Mary's invitation, the way she'd been looking at him. Yes, he supposes, that was a clear signal that he absolutely missed. He thinks back a little further, without intention, to the climax of the piece, the final ecstatically satisfying culmination of twenty plus minutes of heady build up. He remembers the hot, wriggling feeling in his gut, notices in hindsight the urge for- something. Something, he thinks, maybe, that he didn't bother to manifest this morning. He says, not to Mary specifically, "Was I?" and then, "Am I?"

There's a long, long pause, and then Mary laughs. She's looking up at Crowley fondly, indulgently, like they've known each other for years and she knows what it's like to take care of him.

"I read you right on both counts then, after all," she says, her laugh not quite done. "Come on, I know a place you'll like." She heads off confidently and after a slightly dazed moment by himself, finishing off his cigarette, Crowley follows.

**Author's Note:**

> The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was the first public European LGBT activist group, founded in Berlin in the late 1800s.


End file.
